Larry Fink: Hollywood, 2000–2009

Resnick Pavilion

February 13, 2011–April 3, 2011

From blue collar to black tie, Larry Fink has photographed gatherings of every sort during his 40-year career. Keenly attuned to the emotional vibrations that animate social events, he deploys basic capacities of photography—framing, flash, depth of field—to show us gestures, textures, and fleeting expressions we would otherwise miss.

Fink is, among other things, a society photographer, but he doesn't flatter the elite. From 2000 to 2009, Fink documented Vanity Fair's annual Oscar-night party. The very presence of Fink—who is neither paparazzo nor photojournalist—indicates how the parties, and Hollywood culture, have evolved. Mainstream media coverage gives everyone a glimpse of glamour, but Fink provides a different kind of access. The revelation of Fink's society photographs is not that celebrities are superficial, but that their humanity is profound and complex.

Over the course of ten years, Larry Fink, whose photographs are now on view in LACMA’s exhibition, shot Vanity Fair’s legendary annual Oscar party. He was brought in as an alternative view, with no propensity towards chasing celebrity—unusual, considering that since its inception in 1994 at Morton’s in Beverly Hills, the party had become a Who’s Who of Hollywood elite...

The show, on view starting Sunday in the Resnick Pavilion, features photographs Fink took while documenting the annual Vanity Fair Oscar party over the last decade. As the images make clear, the photographs are not remotely the work of a paparazzo, nor of a photojournalist or portraitist...